Recent trends of Physical and Psychological Intimate Partner Violence Against Men in Canada: A Mixed Methods study

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Since 1975, when Murray Straus and Richard Gelles released results from their National Family Violence Survey revealing similar rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) among male and female victims, debates on IPV have been driven by the concepts of gender symmetry (i.e. rates of IPV is similar for male and female victims) versus gender asymmetry (i.e. female victims are predominant). Debates also revolve around the use of various methods of data collection such as self-reported survey and police-reported data. Although meta-analytical studies regarding IPV (see Archer (2000), Capaldi, et. al. (2012), Desmarais, et. al. (2012), Hamel (2012) have revealed gender symmetry in IPV (excluding sexual assault cases), there has been limited or no studies that focus on IPV against men and how they cope with their abusive experiences. This study investigates recent trends in physical and psychological IPV against men by their female partners and explores strategies that male victims of IPV adopt to cope with their abusive experiences. The study adopts Marxist feminist, family conflict, and social learning perspectives to investigate and analyze the subject of IPV against men. Mixed research methods involving quantitative and qualitative approaches are adopted in the collection of the study’s data, which were analyzed using NVivo and SPSS. The General Social Survey (Victimization) data for 2014 was also analyzed for the quantitative dimension of the subject matter while 16 male victims of IPV and 6 key-informants were interviewed for the study’s qualitative dimension. Results of the data analysis revealed the prevalence and severity of various forms of IPV against men, the risk factors of IPV against men, determinants of IPV against male victims by their female partners, and the strategies through which male victims of IPV cope with their abusive experiences.